Death and Judgment

by Donna Leon

  “Where?” Brunetti asked, though he knew the answer even before he asked.

  “In Mestre.”

  “Who did he have the fight with?”

  “Some foreigner.”

  “And where’s the foreigner?”

  “He got away, sir. They had a fight, but then the foreigner got away.”

  “How do you know he was a foreigner?”

  “Sergeant Topa told me. He said the man had an accent.”

  “If the foreigner ran away, who’s filing the complaint against Sergeant Topa, Officer?”

  “I figured that’s why the boys in Mestre sent him back to us, sir. They must have thought we’d know what to do.”

  “Did the people in Mestre tell you to make out an arrest report?”

  “Well, no, sir,” Alvise said after a particularly long pause. “They told Topa to come back here and make a report about what happened. The only form I saw on the desk was an arrest report, so I thought I should use that.”

  “Why didn’t you let him call me, Officer?”

  “Oh, he’d already called his wife, and I know they’re just supposed to get one phone call.”

  “That’s on television, Officer, on American television,” Brunetti said, straining toward patience. “Where is Sergeant Topa now?”

  “He’s gone out to get a coffee.”

  “While you fill out the arrest report?”

  “Yes, sir. It didn’t seem right to have him here while I did that.”

  “When Sergeant Topa gets back—he is coming back, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I told him to come back. That is, I asked him to, and he said he would.”

  “When he comes back, tell him to wait. I’m on my way down there.” Knowing himself able to endure no more, Brunetti hung up without waiting for Alvise’s reply.

  Twenty minutes later, having told Paola that he had to go to the Questura to straighten something out, he arrived and went directly up to the uniformed officers’ room. Alvise sat at a desk, and across from him sat Sergeant Topa, looking no different from the way he had looked a year before when he had left the Questura.

  The former sergeant was short and barrel-shaped; the light from the overhead fixture gleamed on his almost-bald head. He had tipped his chair back on its rear legs and sat with his arms folded over his chest. He looked up when Brunetti came in, studied him for a moment with dark eyes hidden under thick white eyebrows, and let his chair fall to the floor with a heavy thud. He got to his feet and held out his hand to Brunetti, no longer the sergeant and hence able to shake hands as an equal with the commissano, and at that gesture, Brunetti found himself suffused with the dislike he had always felt for the sergeant, a man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited for the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it.

  “Good evening, Sergeant,” Brunetti said, shaking his hand.

  “Commissario,” he answered, but no more than that.

  Alvise stood and glanced back and forth between the two men, but he said nothing.

  “Perhaps we could go up to my office to talk,” Brunetti suggested.

  “Yes,” Topa agreed.

  Brunetti switched on the light when they went in, didn’t bother to remove his coat, hoping that way to make it clear that he didn’t have much time to spend on this, and went to sit behind his desk.

  Topa sat in a chair to the left of the desk.

  “Well?” Brunetti asked.

  “Vianello called and asked me to go and have a look at this place, Pinetta’s. I’d heard about it, but I’d never gone in. Didn’t like what I’d heard about it.”

  “What had you heard?”

  “Lots of blacks. And Slavs. They’re worse, Slavs.” Brunetti, who tended to agree with this notion, said nothing.

  Seeing that he was not going to be prodded into telling his story, Topa abandoned his comments upon national and racial differences and continued. “I went in and had a glass of wine. A couple of guys were playing cards at a table, so I went and looked over their shoulders. No one seemed to mind. I had some more wine and started to talk to another man at the bar. One of the card players left, so I took his place and played a few hands. I lost about ten thousand lire, and then the man who was playing came back, so I stopped playing and went back to the bar and had another glass of wine.” It sounded to Brunetti that Topa could have had a more exciting evening staying home and watching television.

  “What about the fight, Sergeant?”

  “I’m getting to that. After another quarter of an hour or so, one of the other men left the table, and they asked me if I wanted to play some more. I told them I didn’t, so the man at the bar with me went and played a few hands. Then the man who had left came back and had a drink at the bar. We started to talk, and he asked me if I wanted a woman.

  “I told him I didn’t have to buy it, that there was plenty going around for free, and then he said that I’d never be able to get any of what he could get me.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said he could get me girls, young girls. I told him I wasn’t interested in that, preferred women, and then he said something insulting.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he didn’t think I was interested in women, either, and I told him I preferred women, real women, to what he had in mind. And then he started to laugh and shouted something, in Slav, I think, to some of the men who were playing cards. They laughed. That’s when I hit him.”

  “We asked you to go there to try to get information, not to start a fight,” Brunetti said, making no attempt to disguise his irritation.

  “I won’t have people laugh at me,” Topa said, voice mounting into the tight, angry tone that Brunetti remembered.

  “Do you think he meant it?”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the bar. Who offered you girls.”

  “I don’t know. Could have. He didn’t look like a pimp, but with Slavs it’s hard to tell.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “He’s got a broken nose, so he ought to be easy to spot.”

  “Are you sure?” Brunetti asked.

  “About what?”

  “The nose.”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Topa said, holding up his right hand. “I felt the cartilage break.”

  “Would you recognize him or a picture of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Sergeant. It’s too late to do anything about this now. Come back in the morning and take a look at the photos, see if you spot him.”

  “I thought Alvise wanted to arrest me.”

  Brunetti waved his hand in front of his face, as if brushing at a fly. “Forget about it.”

  “Nobody talks to me like that guy did,” Topa said, voice truculent.

  “In the morning, Sergeant,” Brunetti told him.

  Topa shot him a glance, one that reminded Brunetti of the story of his last arrest, got to his feet, and left Brunetti’s office, leaving the door open behind him. Brunetti waited a full ten minutes before he left his office. Outside, it had begun to rain, the first icy drizzle of winter, but its chill drift against his face was a welcome relief after the heat of his dislike of Topa’s company.

  14

  Two days later, but not before Brunetti had been forced to request an order for the files from Judge Vantuno, the Venice office of SIP provided the police with a list of the local calls made from Trevisan’s home and office during the six months prior to his death. As Brunetti had expected, some calls had been made to Pinetta’s, though no pattern was evident. He checked the list of long-distance calls for the dates of the calls to the Padua train station, but there was no correspondence between the dates or times of those calls and the ones to the bar in Mestre.

  He placed both lists side by side on his desk and stared down at them. Unlike the long-distance calls, the local calls had the address of the phone, as well as the name of the pers
on in whose name it was listed, in a long column that ran down the right of the more than thirty pages of numbers. He started to read down the column of names and addresses but gave it up after a few minutes.

  He took the paper, left his office, and went down the steps to Signorina Elettra’s open cubicle. The table that stood in front of the window appeared to be a new one, but the same handblown Venini glass vase stood on it, today filled with nothing more elegant, though nothing could hope to be more happy, than a massive bouquet of black-eyed Susans.

  In complement to them, Signorina Elettra today wore a scarf the secret of whose color had been stolen from canaries. “Good morning, Commissario,” she said as he came in, breaking into a smile quite as happy as that the flowers wore.

  “Good morning, Signorina,” he said. “I have a question for you,” he began, using the plural, and with a friendly nod indicating that the other half was her computer.

  “That?” she asked, looking at the SIP printout in his hand.

  “Yes. It’s the list of Trevisan’s calls. Finally,” he added, unable to disguise the anger he felt at having wasted so much time waiting for official channels to divulge the information.

  “Oh, you should have told me that you wanted them in a hurry, Commissario.”

  “A friend at SIP?” he asked, no longer surprised by the extent of Signorina Elettra’s web.

  “Giorgio,” she said and left it at that.

  Brunetti began, “Do you think he could …”

  She smiled and held out her hand.

  He passed the papers to her. “I need to have them arranged in order of the frequency with which he called them.”

  She looked down and made a note on the pad on her desk. She smiled, suggesting child’s play. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, I’d like to know how many of them are phones in public places—bars, restaurants, even phone booths.”

  She smiled again; more of the same. “Is that all?”

  “No. I’d like to know which one is the number of the person who killed him.” If he expected her to make a note of this, he was disappointed. “But I don’t suppose you can get that.” Brunetti added this last with a smile, to show her he wasn’t serious.

  “I don’t think we can, sir, but perhaps it’s in among these,” she suggested, flourishing the papers. Probably was, Brunetti thought.

  “How long will that take?” he asked, meaning how many days.

  Signorina Elettra glanced down at her watch and then flipped to the end of the papers to see how many pages there were. “If Giorgio is in the office today, I should have it by the afternoon.”

  “How?” Brunetti blurted out before he had time to phrase a more nonchalant question.

  “I’ve had a modem installed on the Vice-Questore’s phone,” she said, pointing to a metal box that sat on the desk a few centimeters from the phone. Wires, Brunetti saw, led from the box to her computer. “All Giorgio has got to do is bring up the information, program it to arrange the calls by frequency, and then send it directly through to my printer.” She paused a moment. “It’ll arrive listed by frequency, and then they’ll give the date and time of the call. Would you like to know how long each call lasted?” She held her pen above her pad and waited for his answer.

  “Yes. And do you think he could get a list of calls from the public phone in the bar in Mestre?”

  She nodded but said nothing, busy writing.

  “By this afternoon?” Brunetti asked.

  “If Giorgio is there, certainly.”

  When Brunetti left her office, she was lifting her phone, no doubt to contact Giorgio and, together with him and through that rectangular thing attached to her computer, leap over whatever obstacles SIP might attempt to place in front of the information in its files as well as over any laws regarding what might be available without a court order.

  Back in his office, he wrote his brief report to Patta and took the trouble to sketch in his plans for the next few days. Much of the former was frustration, and the latter was made up of equal measures of invention and optimism, but he thought it would be enough to content Patta for a while. That done, he phoned Ubaldo Lotto and asked to see him that afternoon, explaining that he needed information about Trevisan’s legal practice. After some initial hesitation and the insistence that he knew nothing about the legal practice, only the financial dealings, Lotto reluctantly agreed and told Brunetti to come to his office at five-thirty.

  That office, which turned out to be in the same building and on the same floor as Trevisan’s legal studio, was on Via XXII Marzo, above the Banca Commerciale d’ltalia, about as good a business address as one could hope to have in Venice. Brunetti presented himself there a few minutes before five-thirty and was shown into an office so conspicuous in its evidence of industry as to be almost predictable, the sort of place a bright young television director might select as the set for a scene that dealt with a bright young accountant. In an open area half the size of a tennis court sat eight separate desks, each holding a computer terminal and screen, each work area surrounded by waist-high folding screens covered in light green linen. Five young men and three young women sat at the terminals; Brunetti found it interesting that none of them bothered to glance at him when he walked past their desks, following in the footsteps of the male receptionist who had let him into the office.

  This young man stopped before a door, knocked twice, and then, without waiting for an answer, opened the door and held it open for Brunetti. When he entered, Brunetti noticed Lotto standing at the doors of a high cabinet placed against the far wall, leaning forward and reaching into it. Brunetti heard the door close behind him and glanced back over his shoulder to see if the young man had come into the room with him. He had not. When he turned back, he saw that Lotto had moved a bit back from the cabinet, a bottle of sweet vermouth in his right hand, two short glasses cupped in his left.

  “Would you like a drink, Commissario?” he asked. “I usually have one at about this time.”

  “Thank you,” said Brunetti, who loathed sweet drinks. “That would be very welcome.” He smiled and Lotto waved him to the other side of the office, where two chairs stood on opposite sides of a low, thin-legged table.

  Lotto poured two generous drinks and brought them across the room. Brunetti took one, thanked him, but waited until his host had put the bottle down on the table between them and taken his own seat before he raised his glass, smiled his friendliest smile, and said, “Cin cin.” The sweet liquid slithered over his tongue and down his throat, leaving a thick slime behind it. The alcohol was overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness; it was like drinking aftershave sweetened with apricot nectar.

  Though all that could be seen from the windows of the room were those of the buildings across the street, Brunetti said, “Compliments on your office. It’s very elegant.”

  Lotto waved his glass in the air in front of him, pushing back the compliment. “Thank you, Dottore. We try to give an appearance that will assure our clients that their affairs are safe with us and that we understand how to take care of them.”

  “That must be very difficult,” Brunetti suggested.

  A shadow crossed Lotto’s face but disappeared immediately, taking part of his smile with it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Commissario.”

  Brunetti tried to look shamefaced, a man not at home with language who had expressed himself, yet once again, badly. “I mean with the new laws, Signor Lotto. It must be very difficult to understand them or how they apply. Ever since the new government changed the rules, my own accountant has admitted that he isn’t sure what he has to do or even how to fill out the forms.” He sipped at his drink, but he took a very small sip, one might even have called it a humble little sip, and went on, “Of course, my finances are hardly so complicated that they would create any confusion, but I imagine that you must have many clients whose finances deserve the attention of an expert.” Another little sip. “I don’t understand these things, of course,” he began and
permitted himself a glance at Lotto, who appeared to be listening attentively. “That’s why I asked to see you, to see if you could give me any information you might think important about Avvocato Trevisan’s finances. You were his accountant, weren’t you? And his business manager?”

  “Yes,” Lotto answered briefly. He then asked, voice neutral, “What sort of information?”

  Brunetti smiled and made an openhanded gesture, as if trying to throw his fingers away. “That’s what I don’t understand and why I came to see you. Since Avvocato Trevisan trusted you with his finances, I thought you might be able to tell us if there were any of his clients who might have been—I’m not sure of the right word to use here—might have been displeased with Signor Trevisan.”

  “’Displeased,’ Commissario?”

  Brunetti glanced down at his knees, a man caught again in the web of his own ineptitude with language, surely a man Lotto could safely believe to be equally inept as a policeman.

  Lotto broke the expanding silence. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” he said, pleasing Brunetti with the too-heavy sincerity of his confusion, for it suggested that Lotto believed himself in the company of a man unaccustomed to subtlety or complexity.

  “Well, Signor Lotto, since we don’t have a motive for this killing—” Brunetti began.

  “Not robbery?” Lotto interrupted, raising his eyebrows in surprise as he spoke.

  “Nothing was taken, sir.”

  “Couldn’t the thief have been disturbed? Surprised?”

  Brunetti gave this suggestion the consideration it would deserve if no one had ever mentioned it, as he so clearly wanted Lotto to believe no one had.

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Brunetti said, speaking as to an equal. He nodded to himself, mulling over this new possibility. Then, with doglike persistence, he returned to his first idea. “But if that wasn’t the case? If what we’re dealing with here is a deliberate murder, then the motive might lie in his professional life.” Brunetti wondered if Lotto would try to cut off the heavytreaded progress of his thought before it arrived at the next likely possibility, that the motive might lie in Trevisan’s personal life.